BSV: Nate, please tell us about life before Ardley.
NDH: I received a B.S. in Information and Telecommunication Systems from Ohio University and an M.S. in Information Systems and an M.B.A. from George Washington University. After getting my M.S. degree, I started what would become a 15-year career at Fannie Mae. I held a variety of roles there, starting as a programmer in the credit risk area and spending my last four years there as Director of Financial Engineering. I spent the next three years as CTO for Vellum Mortgage, and then founded Ardley in 2021.
BSV: What prompted you to become an entrepreneur?
NDH: The financial crisis, which took place a few years after I started at Fannie Mae, really shaped a lot of the way I see the industry. During the runup to the crisis, too many decisions in the mortgage industry were being made without a reliance on real data for real people. I decided that there was not only an opportunity, but a real need for new tools that used real data to make the mortgage application and approval experience better for both the borrower and the lender. And that’s what we’re all about at Ardley.
BSV: How relevant was your time at Fannie Mae to what you’re doing now?
NDH: Quite relevant, but there’s one big difference. Fannie Mae is really behind the scenes, buying mortgages in the secondary market that others originate. I realized that if I really wanted to help borrowers as well as servicers, it would have to be in the primary market. So that’s where Ardley operates.
BSV: What makes Ardley’s approach unique?
NDH: The idea is to better use the data that’s already available to the servicer to enable them to make a proactive offer to an existing customer, rather than waiting for the customer to come to them. There are many types of offers the servicer can make, including re-financing a first mortgage or taking on a second mortgage or a home-equity loan. Most lenders’ existing marketing techniques aren’t capable of efficiently uncovering these opportunities. Once the borrower gets the offer, they can see all the details of the deal upfront, with much of their personal information already filled in thanks to our proprietary software. As a result, our application pull-through – the percentage of mortgage applications that borrowers finish – is 75%, which is well above the industry average.
BSV: Are today’s high interest rates complicating your efforts?
NDH: Today’s interest rates are definitely making it a pretty slow time for lenders, who are having to scrape everywhere they can to make loans in this environment. But that’s precisely where we come in. Our ability to identify opportunities for them to proactively put good offers in their customers’ mailboxes and assure them that they’re pre-qualified is unlocking significant value for lenders.
BSV: So what are the key benefits Ardley delivers the banks’ customers?
NDH: One big benefit is that we make it so much easier for them to go what would otherwise be a lengthy and often unpleasant application process. Again, when they’re first presented the offer, most of the application is already filled out for them. In addition, because our technology makes it less expensive to originate loans, borrowers also benefit when the lender opts to pass that savings on to their customers in the form of a lower fee or a lower interest rate.
BSV: Have you found that your software provides any benefits that are having a greater impact than you'd expected?
NDH: We’re finding that we’ve been generating a lot more low-balance loans than we’d projected. Most lenders have always had the potential to do a lot of low-balance loans, but they historically have struggled to get a lot of attention from their loan officers for the simple reason that their sales commissions were relatively low on these loans. The beauty of our software is that it doesn’t think like a loan officer, but it can do the work of a loan officer. And this is allowing lenders to efficiently pursue the significant untapped opportunities that low-balance loans have always represented.
BSV: What does the future hold for Ardley?
NDH: We’re developing a lot of enhancements to superior loan experience we already offer. There’s a lot more automation we can provide to make the experience even more efficient and convenient for both lenders and borrowers. As the first mover in our field, our attitude is that we have to always be striving to outdo ourselves before any of our competitors have a chance to outdo us. And over the next 18-24 months, we want to bring these benefits to as many lenders and borrowers as we can.
BSV: Do you have and parting advice for budding founders?
NDH: As a founder, the most important thing you can do is to work on your product. There are people who can handle other things for you, but no one can work your idea like you can.
